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If I Loved You...

I few months ago, I wrote an email to our church office manager saying "I just don't love our church right now..."  It wasn't the first time I went on the record saying I just didn't love my church.  

 He responded with a warm-well wish but it made me think really about my relationship with my church and THEE church. 

 It made me think of a song by the Band Delta Rae's (love them)  "If I Loved You.."   The song is talking about a relationship.  Elizabeth Hopkins sings about how life would be easy if she loved him.  She points out all the things she would do, if she loved him.  Marry him, have children, make love,etc.   She goes on in the chorus singing...

 "But I don't love you, not like I want to
I don't love you and that makes it hard"

I feel like that with the church sometimes. I have always believed that our church isn't just a building or a place to worship.  It's meant to be a real relationship that is filled with love.  


 So I was thinking to what does it mean when I say to myself... when I wrote: I don't love you (My Church)  vs.  Do I no longer love (Thee Church.. Christ)?  

 What happens too often, my opinion... is when we become believers we fall madly in love with Christ.  We are in that giddy romance of wanting to please everyone and be everything.  We join a church, build relationships, serve,  love others, give, worship and so forth.   We try hard to not sin and we do things to help us become more like Christ.  

But as time goes by we get bored, burned out, bummed that our "church" fails to meet all our needs. We start to see all the flaws in organized religion. People let us down. Mismanagement of money.  Personality differences.  Sin, lots of sin.  Youth workers doing unimaginable things. Lack of shepherding, lack of love  The list is long and our hearts break a little and we say things like "I just don't love you anymore."   

  We fall into pit that Satin wants us to fall in by saying our church no longer loves us and we no longer love our church.  The building, address, the songs, the ministries/pastors, etc... 

 It's real and I have struggled deeply with this over the past year ... my church doesn't define who I am in Christ.  My church is a community that is full of sinners and people just like me who sometimes just need to fall in love with it all over again.  

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